


at least we still have time

by lalalyds2



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: CAOS Part Three spoilers, F/F, I know we're goin to hell but yo that's what this show is About, Sibling Incest, Spoilers for Part Three, ancillary relationships with hilda/cee and zelda/marie, sorry not sorry about Spellcest, was Supposed to be old married couple and jealousy but somehow turned to angst sorry bout that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22426456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalyds2/pseuds/lalalyds2
Summary: she knows Hilda is leaving.  it's writings on a wall she will not read.  but she knows.- OR -season three had me shook and sisters need to stay together
Relationships: Hilda Spellman/Zelda Spellman
Comments: 29
Kudos: 68





	at least we still have time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurdelaire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurdelaire/gifts).



> so this is a SUPER LATE fic exchange - I'm so sorry it took a whole month!!! I switched what I was gonna write three times, and then the show updated and I couldn't Not write something about it. I tried to incorporate your wish for some #MarriedThings and Jealousy and sisters, hopefully that pulls through in there. 
> 
> thank you So Much for your patience - I hope I wrote something slightly worth the wait!

And in the aftermath, it’s just a hand reaching out to the darkness and a quivering voice suspended in weighted air.

“Hildie, are you there?”

So much nothing.

And then there’s a hand grasping a hand, and a quiet, steady voice reassuring that reality is indeed kind.

“Yes, I’m here.”

A pause in the blackness, relief too enormous to release.

“Come into my bed.”

The rustling of sheets, the creaking of a bed too small to host two aching bodies, the sigh of souls being soothed.

Zelda settles her head just above Hilda’s chest.

If Zelda is very still, the firm beat of Hilda’s heart can be heard, pushing precious lifeblood to every inch of her reconstituted body.

“Nightmare, Zelds?”

She feels the vibrations rather than hears the British lilt.

Nestles a tiny bit deeper into cotton and warm flesh.

“Now who’s ruining everything?”

Harsh words whispered too haltingly, fingers clutching indents around Hilda’s middle.

A blue-tipped finger draws circles around Zelda’s shoulder strap.

If Hilda is very still, the ghost of trembling lips can be felt, pressing the stark realization that she is alive and _here_ up against her collarbone.

She says nothing more.

They hold in the darkness, till the soft pink of another morning assures them that they’ve made it together through another night.

~*~

The kitchen clatters with noise.

Zelda, rare to her character, cooks alongside Hilda, minding the bacon as Hilda sautés peppers and onions for omelet insides.

They take turns using the spatula, Hilda nudging Zelda’s forearm to get it back, Zelda simply snatching it when the need arises.

“We need to get back to the Academy soon,” Zelda says over the stovetop’s steam. “Our enemies may have perished and fled, but many more lurk in the shadows, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.”

Hilda halts, spatula hovering as onions start to singe.

Not missing a beat, Zelda takes it and gives the pan a firmer than necessary scrape.

“Unless you had _other_ plans today, rather than trying to salvage what’s left of our ever depleting numbers and ever changing doctrines?”

She sniffs, refusing to look at her shorter sister.

“Uh—well, I had thought I would pop on by to Doctor Cee’s. We have a lot to talk about, what with me almost... _eating_ him.”

“Yes. I suppose that is something you must discuss if he is to be your fiancé.”

“I mean, he still _is_ my fiancé.”

“I see.”

“Are you mad?”

Zelda retreats to the coffee maker, leaving Hilda to lurch forward and maintain the eggs alone.

“Why should I be? I told you before my feelings on the matter.”

“But—” She’s interrupted by a knock against the counter.

Both heads swivel to take in Marie LaFleur leaning against the cupboards, beautiful and smiling, like a cat who’d stolen the best bit of sunlight.

“Good morning, ma cherie. Pardon my intrusion, but Sabrina let me in on her way out.”

Zelda shakes her head with a vigorous hair toss.

“That girl. Saves the world from rot and ruin, and already up to set a new mess yet again.”

She starts to leave, coffee in hand.

Pauses.

Stares at Hilda for one calculating moment, reaches a hand out for Marie, and kisses her full on the mouth.

Fixes her lipstick with a fourth finger and goes to check after her wayward niece.

Sounds of reanimated cooking fills the kitchen.

“May I help?” Marie asks.

It only takes a second before Hilda says, “S—sure, yeah.”

She hands Marie a new spatula and pays extra special attention to her eggs.

They cook in relative silence, a half foot between their hands and an ocean between their actual selves.

The air grows thicker, winnowing down to an awkward edge, time slowing to a pinpointed crawl, till—

“Your omelets look delicious.”

“Oh, um... thanks.”

“May I ask what spices you use? You know, back home, we use this lovely recipe of cinnamon and chili...”

~*~

When Zelda returns, with a freshly lit cigarette and a freshly stewing ire for the girl who keeps coming and going with never so much as a by-your-leave, she comes into an unexpected sight.

Marie and Hilda are giggling over the stove like schoolgirls, setting things on plates together as though they’ve done it a thousand times.

“And then she practically hexed him into the next week!”

Marie laughs, happy and amused, a hand on Hilda’s forearm to share the good humor.

Zelda takes a deep drag from her cigarette.

“You two are getting along nicely then.”

“Oh, hi Zelds, we were just talking about you.”

Zelda blows smoke through her nose.

“Marie was telling me about mèt-tèts, how strong yours is, and I said of course it had to be, because even when we were young that boy—Henrik, wasn’t he—only called you little, and you punched _and_ hexed him.”

The little corners of Zelda’s mouth quirk up. She hides it with another inhale.

“So. What’s left to do here?” She asks, breathing out as she comes to Hilda’s side.

Hilda puts a hand on her hip, only to shoo her away.

“Don’t, you’ll get smoke on the eggs.”

“Really Hildie... As if carcinogens affect witches.”

Hilda gives her a look, shares the look with Marie, then bustles out of the kitchen, two heaping trays of food in her arms.

Zelda frowns. Marie just winks back at her.

“You two are very close,” Marie notes.

Zelda hums noncommittally, steals a pepper from a dish still in the kitchen, pops it into her mouth.

Shrugs as she swallows.

“From the day she was born. But... the ties that bind are starting to thin. She’s going to leave soon.”

“Ah yes, she told me. Marrying a man. Living a quiet life.”

“She’s a _Spellman_.” The utterance is forceful. Then, quieter. “That life has never been for us.”

“It’s never been for you.”

Marie comes to her side, gently takes Zelda’s right hand between both of hers.

“There are some who can withstand chaos, who can stay in the eye of the storm. There are some who can’t.”

“Hilda can.”

Fervency glistens in Zelda’s right eye.

Marie wipes it away with a gentle thumb.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to.”

~*~

The Academy is no less quiet with Hilda missing. Young witches and warlocks bustle about, chattering together as they put the rooms back in order.

Zelda still feels the absence sharply.

She reads new books on the triune goddess—in all the forms she takes.

The Hecatae. The Morrigan. The Erinyes.

The three women in one, be it the graces, the fates, or the furies.

The woman of three phases, beginning and middle and end, whom all gods eventually must bow down to.

Zelda wonders why she had not sought her sooner.

And in all the myth and history and words, she keeps finding herself calling out for Hilda.

Is only met with silence, and memory her sister is not here.

It takes three absent-minded calls before she leaves her office.

There must be something she must still tear down.

It takes form in a stone goat’s head that hadn’t yet been turned to rubble.

She shatters it with vicious gusto.

~*~

Hilda comes to the Academy right before dinner, humming some song about murder under her breath and blushing fiercely as she fixes the hair around her neck.

It doesn’t hide the fact there’s a bruise in the shape of a mouth there.

Purple and amorous and so very fresh.

Zelda sits Marie right next to her and flirts and teases and ignores how her sister stares the entire night.

~*~

“You’re avoiding me.”

It’s brave of her little sister to come right out and say it, just a decade ago they would have dithered and withered on it and this direct address shows progress, but still.

Zelda bristles.

“Hard to avoid someone who’s never around.”

Hilda huffs but doesn’t deny it.

Zelda slips off the shoulder of her robe, rubs lotion brusquely, watches Hilda remove pillows from their bed.

Proof she’s planning to stay the night.

It should soothe.

Instead, it rankles.

And because she’s ingrained with self-torment or because she needs the destruction of cleaved souls to come sooner rather than later, she asks questions she’d rather not know the answers to.

“So, how is the trash-peddling, filth-publishing mortal then? Still accepting the fact you almost devoured him with good humor... or is that something he _likes_ about you.”

Hilda’s hand flies up to her neck, biting her lip as color spreads across her cheeks.

“Zelda—”

“No, I get to say it. The coven is still in need, this _family_ is still in need, and yet you’re off cavorting with a mortal who just proved how very frail and short-lived he will be, and how very much he does not fit in our world. Are you so disloyal to forsake everything that’s yours just for a few more years with him?”

Her chest heaves, Hilda’s eyes brim, but silence hangs for a very long while.

Hilda sniffles, fiddles the fringe on the last decorative pillow.

“That was just nasty, wasn’t it.”

And then she leaves it, walks out. The door’s solid bang her last words.

And Zelda is left alone.

~*~

She dreams of moons in dirt and wind in hair and calls for power that have always been there.

She cries and digs her hands in.

She cries and tears her hair out.

She cries, because.

She’s crying for Hildie, and there is no one coming.

~*~

She’s flung awake to the darkness as her door is flung open.

The silk sheets go sling and a warm, full body clings.

“I’m sorry,” in a choked whisper. “I’m still here.”

She hears the promise, she hears herself saying the same.

But all she knows is she’s kissing that disloyal mouth, tasting salt and soul and relief and desperation and homecoming on two lips that keep whispering false reverence.

“I know you’re going to leave me, Hildie,” she mouths against a bruised throat.

Licks magic against the wound, erasing someone else’s lovehurts.

“Just please. Not yet.”

And there’s a warm palm on her chest against her heart, an anchoring point against the crash of her anguish.

The eye in this chaotic storm of two people who want different things and still need each other.

“I _am_ going, Zelds.”

Hilda’s voice in her ear, a breathy caress that devastates as it soothes.

“But I’m never _leaving_ you. Not ever.”

Zelda knows it’s a lie, but to do anything but believe it will hurt so much worse.

She kisses the pulse that flows throughout her sister’s body, begs the flesh at least to listen to her.

She mouths her sorrows against soft thighs, whispers apologies to kneecaps and calves.

Rises higher and kisses for love and agony.

She begs the clit not to forget her touch.

And when Hilda sighs release and reaches out for her, she doesn’t relent.

Only says, “I can do better.”

And means it, till Hilda is quaking once more and then again until Zelda is positive there are only stars in her sister’s eyes.

She wants to try again, but Hilda is pulling her up and settling her close and making her come undone again and again till her cries sound a little less heartbroken.

Their skin settles hot and right against each other, hands on each other’s scars to make sure they’re both healing.

Zelda feels drunk on released tension and pretty, hollow promises.

“I won’t wait for you,” she says against Hilda’s newly healed neck, suckles a different pulse point that makes her sister moan.

“I know.”

“But... come back. Will you?”

Hilda kisses her pink, raw mouth.

And there is need beyond desire and want.

There is promise she can’t deny or dismiss or prove false.

“Always.”

~*~

The morning comes, as it does every morning, filtering through dark curtains and lifting the veil of spilled truth.

Zelda lays in bed, bare faced and quiet, and watches Hilda dress.

It’s more a memorization of body maps than it is a lustful stare, but Hilda blushes all the same and talks about Marie’s recipes for breakfast.

Zelda listens with blurred attention, because a thought is taking precedent, solid and warm in the making.

Hilda is still here.

At least they have some time.


End file.
